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Iran tried to drive up oil prices by attacking tankers: Pompeo
[Washington Examiner] Four oil tankers damaged earlier this month were targeted by Iran in an attempt to drive up international oil prices, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo."These were efforts by the Iranians to raise the price of crude oil throughout the world," Pompeo told reporters Thursday. That assessment previews a two-pronged effort to take place over the next week, driven chiefly by the top U.S. envoy and White House national security adviser John Bolton. Pompeo is headed to Europe for a diplomatic swing through two of the Western European countries that remain a party to the nuclear agreement with Iran that President Trump decided to exit last year. And Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, is preparing to brief the Security Council on evidence of Iran’s responsibility for the heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf. "I don't think anybody who is familiar with the situation in the region, whether they have examined the evidence or not, has come to any conclusion other than that these attacks were carried out by Iran or their surrogates," Bolton told reporters in London earlier Thursday. Trump’s team and Iranian officials have been rattling sabers for weeks, as Trump’s team revoked the waivers that exempted a handful of nations from U.S. sanctions designed to put a severe crimp in Iran’s ability to sell oil abroad. Trump also renewed sanctions that tighten restrictions on Iran’s right to stockpile low-enriched uranium and heavy water, which prompted the regime to announce that it would no longer honor the caps set by the nuclear deal on its caches of the key nuclear materials. Posted by: Besoeker 2019-05-31 |
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